Pom Poko

• 1. Introduction

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  Pom Poko, a 1994 animated film from Studio Ghibli, opens not with heroes or villains but with raccoon dogs fighting each other over scraps of shrinking forest. The film was written and directed by Isao Takahata and released in Japan on the 16th of July, 1994. It was Japan's submission to the 67th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, though it did not advance to the nominee stage. What kind of animated film sends its central characters to their deaths, blends into human society in defeat, or ends on a golf course where a grassy clearing is all that remains of an ancient forest? Those are the questions Pom Poko spends its running time answering.

• 2. The Tanuki in Folklore

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  In Japanese folklore, tanuki are not simple animals. They belong to a category called bake-danuki, creatures capable of shapeshifting into people or other objects. The source distinguishes them sharply from kitsune, or fox spirits: tanuki are sociable and mischievous, too fond of tasty treats and fun to be a genuine threat to humans. That distinction matters enormously to the film's emotional logic. The very title, Pom Poko, traces back to a 1919 poem by Ujo Noguchi, which described the sound of tanuki drumming their own bellies. The poem became a popular children's song when it was set to music in 1925, which means a Japanese audience in 1994 would have arrived at the film carrying childhood associations with these creatures. Takahata drew on the work of three additional creators: Shigeru Sugiura, Hisashi Inoue, and Shigeru Mizuki, who were credited for tanuki designs, yokai imagery, and elements of the plot. Mizuki himself appears in the film as a character who serves as a commentator.

• 3. A Forest Under Siege

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  The story begins in the late 1960s in the Tama Hills on the outskirts of Tokyo, where a suburban development called New Tama is cutting through tanuki habitat. The timeline then jumps forward to the early 1990s, during the first years of the Heisei era, when the situation has grown desperate. With food and living space shrinking every year, the tanuki turn on each other before the matriarch Oroku convinces them to unify. Their resistance is led by a set of sharply distinct figures: Gonta, an aggressive chief; Seizaemon, described as an old guru; Oroku herself, the wise-woman; and Shoukichi, young and resourceful. The tanuki's illusion abilities are central to their strategy, but the film notes they have to re-learn these skills, having let them lapse. Their early sabotage injures and kills construction workers, but the project keeps going. The developers simply replace whoever quits.

• 4. Escalation and Collapse

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  Messengers travel to Shikoku, a distant island where development has not reached and tanuki are still worshipped, returning with three legendary elders. The elders help stage a massive ghost parade through the town, attempting to persuade humans that the place is haunted. The effort kills one of the elders, and the parade's impact is immediately undercut when a nearby theme park owner claims credit for it as a publicity stunt. After that failure, unity collapses. Gonta's faction turns to eco-terrorism, fighting until they are destroyed in a pitched battle with police. Fused into the form of a tsurube-otoshi, the last of Gonta's group dies blocking a dekotora. Another faction seeks media attention by appearing on television to argue for their habitat. A third group, led by a senile elder, drifts away on a ship and sails to their deaths. The remaining elder investigates joining human society, following the path already taken by the last of the transforming kitsune.

• 5. The Grand Illusion

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  In a final act of resistance, the surviving tanuki pool their remaining strength to briefly transform the developed land back into forest, letting humans see what once existed there. Then, one by one, the tanuki with strong enough transformation abilities blend into the human world. Those who cannot transform are left behind. Public sympathy for the tanuki, stirred by the television appeals, pressures developers into setting aside some areas as parks. The parks are too small. Some non-transforming tanuki try to survive in them, dodging traffic to find food in human waste. Others scatter to compete with tanuki already living in the countryside. Shoukichi, now living as a human, one day follows a non-transformed tanuki through a gap in a wall and finds a grassy clearing where some former companions gather. He transforms back to join them. The final shot pulls out to reveal that the clearing sits inside a golf course, surrounded by suburban sprawl.

• 6. Production and Legacy

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  Pom Poko was Takahata's third film made for Studio Ghibli, and the studio used its production to begin experimenting with computer-generated imagery. The film finished as the top-grossing domestic Japanese film of 1994. Critical reception has been durable: the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes recorded an 86% approval rating based on 14 reviews, and Metacritic assigned a weighted average of 77 out of 100 from 8 critics, noting generally favorable reviews. At the 49th Mainichi Film Awards, the film won Best Animation Film. In 1995, it took the Grand Prix in the feature film category at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The North American DVD release came on the 16th of August, 2005, through Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, paired with My Neighbors the Yamadas. A Blu-ray followed on the 3rd of February, 2015, and GKIDS reissued the film on both formats on the 6th of February, 2018, under a new licensing arrangement with Studio Ghibli.